On a flight to New York City, I was struck by a review for a video game about the hunt for a child murderer. It’s called “Heavy Rain” and game critic Seth Scheisel confessed “no single-player experience has made me as genuinely nervous, unsettled, surprised, emotionally riven and altogether involved.”

Something in Scheisel’s appreciative jitters led me back to “Red Riding Trilogy,” an engrossing film event opening today for a limited run at the Starz FilmCenter. (We ran an early consideration last Sunday, abridged here.)

After all, one of the things so unnervingly miserable about the brutal, ambitious, addictive British import is that unlike the characters in “Heavy Rain,” the right people seem little haunted by the child murders taking place in their rainy, glum, northern England midst.

The three films are based on British expatriate David Peace’s novels about serial crime and punishing corruption in Yorkshire and cover three “years of our Lord” — 1974, 1980 and 1983. Peace wrote a quartet, but finances demanded the trimming.

Each installment was helmed by a differently gifted director: Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker. And the varied styles provide their own wonder.

All were written for the screen by Tony Grisoni.

Taken together — and this is our advice — the trilogy insists on five hours of undivided attention.

From the start, the title declares where we are headed. Off we go into woods where wolves lurk, where foes present themselves as friends. The Yorkshire of the films is a place where little girls are in danger. Some, like Clare Kemplay, last seen wearing a red anorak jacket, never make it home. And when — if? — they grow to become women, violence remains.

Some lads barely fare better. Robert Sheehan quietly amazes as reappearing rent-boy BJ. Mentally damaged young men of zero means are coerced, or worse, by the police. They confess to crimes they likely didn’t commit for reasons they surely don’t understand.

In “1974,” a leisure-suited real-estate baron, played by Sean Bean, is master of this dank universe. He’d have the cops in his pocket if his pants weren’t so tight. Instead, he just owns them.

The cops boast, “This is the North and we do what we want.” What they want is not very nice.

Oh, ax men cometh to the rescue in various guises. Andrew Garfied plays young- Turk reporter Eddie Dunford in “1974.” Paddy Considine arrives to conduct an internal inquiry in “1980.” But Yorkshire proves tough on a would-be hero.

In “1983,” Mark Addy is dragged into the muck as least-likely-to-succeed, slovenly solicitor John Piggott.

There are characters that appear in all three. Indeed, “Red Riding: 1983” is full of flashbacks to the unsolved crimes, the unresolved psychic wounds.

Almost to a person, the returning characters serve as ugly evidence of how long it can take to root out the bad guys. The task is nearly impossible when they occupy “good guy” positions.

“Red Riding Trilogy,” with its remarkable performances, its brilliantly constructed puzzle, its dispiriting cycles of violence, isn’t an easy ride. But it is an exhilarating one.